That subject title made you look, huh? Well then. Here's the story.
First of all, my mice are dead. Always have been. And frequently have they been smashed, pounded and harmed far more than any living being ought to ever experience. Thankfully, my mice has a plug on the end of their tail, telling them to wzzzt... use red-ray vision and see stuff in tiny shitty detail. Clark Kent has nothing on them! But right, the story...
Since around March, I've been at war. How, you ask? Sometimes, my mouse would refuse to move when I poked it. Then it got worse, and my perfectly sweet computer would decide oi oi, ding ding, bloop bloop, your usb is poop! My mouse would lose its guiding light, and I'd have to plug it in again to jolt it back to life, since dead mice obviously do not move. Oh boy. The bugger was revived. Obviously, the tail of my mouse was starting to age, and we all know the red-ray vision comes from the tail, and not the eyes! Again, Clark Kent is the reason people are so horribly misinformed nowadays... but I'm getting distracted once more.
Some annoyance understandably accompanied this process. I changed the grassy Matty to a paper Matty, but to no avail. Maybe the paper Matty is too cold... so I put the grassy Matty back. Then I gave him special chow - still to no avail. So, as a final resort I and my mouse visited Mr Google, the old spider from Mount Fik-yu-kanno-spel-an-I-no-betr. (Ok, I made that part up.) He kindly informed me that the Logitech MX518 family has a genetic mishap where the tail loses touch with its nerve endings. Okay, problem solved you'd think: whack the mouse (MX for friends) and bury him under the ground (without a proper eulogy of course), and make Mary-Betty take up the slack. Good ol' Mary-Betty, my first furry girlfriend from 10 years ago. She's a rockstar who never let me down! (I was the best she could do, you see - but she refuses to admit that.)
Ok, so Mary-Betty and I, we had to work together, and I made MX Matty Mary-Betty's Matty. And skating - you should have seen those tails. Until she went flat out on her belly, that is, and suffered like the already forgotten MX. Once she runs out of momentum, it was hell getting her going again - but eventually one could jolt her awake, just like MX could be jolted awake. After 15 years of rodent-handling experience on my part that should not come as a surprise to anyone... right?
Now, while I completely deny any feelings of love, or even affection for Mary-Betty, her struggles did get to me. Back to the special chow. No good? Okay. Maybe she's allergic to my wallpaper. Or maybe the frame or the glass of my windows. Out with the old, in with the new... all for dear Mary-Betty. But alas, she struggled, and struggled. Even stripping the place of the bare essentials did no good.
Then that pointless mouserer interfered. Kept on hampering about that Matty. 'The Matty is fine!' I proclaimed, 'I tried that for he who shall not be named!' but alas, I was at my wits end, so back to another paper Matty. And oooh boy, did Mary-Betty have fun with that paper Matty, you wouldn't believe! After four months of hell.. finally, dear Mary-Betty brought a smile to my lips once more.
Moral of this story? Well, that's simple: I can make up dozens of bullshit sentences without the aid of mind-altering substances like alcohol and drugs. What you say, Mary-Betty? That's not the moral? Damn.
Okay, let's try again. Moral of this story? Mary-Betty is an old mouse. She always had some issues with her eyes: red-ray vision was sort of an invention back in her day, and horribly tiring on the eyelids to boot. So, when she didn't move, she rested her eyelids... and sometimes forgot to open them after moving around. After all, on the Grassy Matty all the ground looks alike - especially on the darker colours, so how was she supposed to tell she moved without using her red-ray vision? She never did until I jolted her onto a lighter colour on the Grassy Matty. (Which, incidentally, was also the only other colour on the Grassy Matty.)
Still no good, Mary-Betty? You old cow, we're definitely euthanizing you after I finish typing this. I got a steely mouse in already. Kinzo or whatnot is his name. He'll serve me well, and he came with his own Snuggy Matty. Okay. The real moral of the story: mouser always mousers people, and took four bloody months to point out the matty. He's to blame for all suffering of all mice ever to venture the now very bloody grassy matty. (Yes, where do you think I slammed my mice down on when they needed to wake up? Nuff said.)
And those were the tails (see what I did there?) of MX, Mary-Betty and the Grassy Matty.
Sane peoples english:
Spoiler
Ok, no more silly stories, and back to plain english for those of you who don't get it. My mousepad is 10 years old. Served me well for years with about four different mice. I happen to have it turned 90 degrees so I can enjoy it in portrait-layout, which ended up making the symptoms worse. My most recent mouse (MX518) had a wire break that caused both USB issues and a move-no-more-at-times problem. Now, by using my old mouse from the 98 era (Mary-Betty) I could keep working.. except it had the same issue the MX518 had in that it would sometimes not move after it came to rest still. I checked tons of drivers, reinstalled a bunch and essentially went through hell, before mouser pointed out the mousemat. I had tried the MX518 with some random wad of paper at one point, which hadn't helped, but a different wad of paper made this old mouse happy. It turns out the dark-blue-on-grey clipart-lineart image caused this old mouse trouble when it turned itself into a low-power energy saving mode when not used for several seconds. It would notice new movements fine on the grey area, and on small blue areas.. but when keeping the optical eye perfectly in a dark-blue area, it would not pick up on movements.. which explains the jolt-it-awake behaviour: I'd have to drag it all the way over to a grey area. And I often move vertically, and the lines were vertical.. which only made it worse!
I wanted to include a list of articles with for me incorrect advice (such as this
one) but I can't find the article anymore that completely 100% matched my symptoms of momentarily not working after the mouse having rested for a while. Some things that were suggested were: 'some' driver interferes (gpu/network/mouse/keyboard/etc), power plan stuff (no use), power settings for usb devices (nope, I used my mice both as PS/2 and USB), BIOS plug and play stuff, etc. It was hell.
Hopefully this hellish post will semi-help someone who runs into this same issue some day.
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